The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) forces on Thursday killed 26 rebels from a group, which is believed to have a link with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) while trying to repel an attack in the country’s east Ebola zone, reported Reuters.
The fire exchange took place in a village near the city of Beni, an area which is the epicenter of Democratic Republic of Congo’s worst-ever Ebola epidemic. More than a dozen different militia groups and associated armed gangs operate in the area.
General Leon-Richard Kasonga, the army’s spokesman for east Congo, said the rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attacked a position in Ngite village and the soldier killed 26 of them as they returned fire and pursued them.
“Twenty-six rebels were neutralized by the army, and their bodies recovered,” Kasonga told journalists in Goma.
While the ADF has never claimed to have a connection with IS, witnesses said the Congolese militant group carried out an attack in nearby Bovata in April that IS claimed.
ISIL described that attack as it’s first in the “Central Africa Province” of the “Caliphate,” the name it gave to the area of Syria and Iraq that it controlled for several years from 2014.
The ADF came to power in western Uganda in 1995 under the leadership of Jamil Mukulu, a Christian-turned-Muslim. As the rebel group is has been forced out of Uganda, it currently operates in the border area in the DRC’s North Kivu province, an area where other armed groups are also active.
The group has been blamed for recruiting and using child soldiers, killing hundreds of civilians since 2014, as well as 15 Tanzanian peacekeepers who died in an attack in December 2017.
The ongoing violent attacks around Beni have adversely affected the efforts to contain the Ebola epidemic, the second worst outbreak in history. The epidemic has already killed close to 1,300 people since August.
